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Updated: June 4, 2025
"Exactly," nodded Selwyn, following his big brother-in-law into the hall, where, from beside a lamp-lit sewing table a trim maid rose smiling: "Miss Erroll desires to know whether Captain Selwyn would care to see her gown when she is ready to go down?" "By all means," said Selwyn, "I should like to see that, too. Will you let me know when Miss Erroll is ready? Thank you."
"There is cigar-holes burned into the carpet," insisted Mrs. Greeve, "and a mercy we wasn't all insinuated in our beds, one window-pane broken and the gas a blue an' whistlin' streak with the curtains blowin' into it an' a strange cat on to that satin dozy-do; the proof being the repugnant perfume." "All of which," said Selwyn, "Mr. Erroll will make every possible amends for.
We'll probably lose the Philippines now," he added gloomily; "but it's my thankless country's fault; you all had a chance to make me dictator, you know. Miss Erroll, do you want a second-hand sword? Of course there are great dents in it " "I'd rather have those celebrated boots," she replied demurely; and Mr. Lansing groaned. "How tall you're growing, Drina," remarked Selwyn.
Pacing the floor, disturbed, uncertain as to the course he should pursue, he looked up presently to see Miss Erroll descending the stairs, fresh and sweet in her radiant plumage. As she caught his eye she waved a silvery chinchilla muff at him a marching salute and passed on, calling back to him: "Don't forget Gerald!" "No," he said, "I won't forget Gerald."
The Minster twins gazed soulfully at the Atlantic; Eileen Erroll bit her under lip and stood up suddenly. "Come on," she said; joined her hands skyward, poised, and plunged. One after another the others followed and, rising to the surface, struck out shoreward. On the sunlit sands dozens of young people were hurling tennis-balls at each other.
"Of course, Holly Erroll was her father, and that accounts for something; and her mother seems to have been a wit as well as a beauty which helps you to understand; but the brilliancy of the result aged nineteen, mind you is out of all proportion; cause and effect do not balance. . . . Why, Boots, an ordinary man I mean an everyday fellow who dines and dances and does the harmlessly usual about town, dwindles to anæmic insignificance when compared to that young girl even now when she's practically undeveloped when her intelligence is like an uncut gem still in the matrix of inexperience "
"If you can't stay and dine with me," he said, "I won't put you down. You know, of course, I can only ask you once in a year, so we'll stay here and chat a bit." "Right you are," said young Erroll, flinging off his very new and very fashionable overcoat a wonderfully handsome boy, with all the attraction that a quick, warm, impulsive manner carries.
Selwyn and Miss Erroll, strolling together out of the nursery and down the stairs, fell unconsciously into the amiable exchange of badinage again; she taunting him with his undignified behaviour, he retorting in kind. "Anyway that was a perfectly dreadful verse you taught Billy," she concluded. "Not as dreadful as the chorus," he remarked, wincing.
It was amusing; but men do not speak of such things at their clubs, no matter how amusing. Besides, if the story were aired and were traced to him, Ruthven might turn ugly. There was no counting on Ruthven. Meanwhile Selwyn, perplexed and worried, found young Erroll just entering the visitors' room, and greeted him with nervous cordiality.
He would have been earl of Erroll had he lived, but if we follow him in his short life from classic Eton to the field of Quatre-Bras, we shall find him again, on a bright June day in 1815, lying as if asleep, as fair and noble-looking as before, but silent in death.
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